WIP : Pose & Animation Bank

I Am currently working on a new tool to store and reuses poses and animations.The user interface is almost finished and the basic features of the poses part too.

For now, it is possible to add characters and categories. It is also possible to add poses with a snapshot. Those poses are reusable and can be deleted, and there is a tool to select the controllers of the pose.

 

What remains to be done ?

 

I have to do the animations part, wich will be a bit more complicated. It will be possible to insert the animations wherever you want in the time line, they will probably be scalable to.

 

I'd also like to add substract/add modes for the poses, but I don't know if it will be in the first version or not.

In a future version there will be a tool to add other directories, so you can store your poses and animations in different folder (flashdrive, HDD, etc...)

 

 

How does it works ?

 

It is pretty simple : you select some controllers, position you camera for the snapshot, choose a name, character and category and click on "add". Now the image is stored as a .png and the pose/animation informations as a .xml, in the same folder as the script.

 

One important thing to know is that it doesn't need to be launched from maya's default folder. I am currently running it from a flashdrive. I haven't try yet but it can also probably be launched from a server in a studio, so all the animators can share and use all their poses and animations.

 

When ?!

 I think I will be able to publish a first version at the beginning of september.

Rigging Reel : July 2013

Here's my demo reel for July 2013. Enjoy :)



Guillaume FERRACHAT - Rigging Reel - July 2013 from Guillaume FERRACHAT on Vimeo.

SCRIPT : gf_multiRivet

I uploaded another script on creativecrash. You can find it here.
It attaches the selected object(s) to a mesh, with a rivet. I use it a lot for facial rigs, but there's a lot of uses ☻

More info : http://the-rigging-clown.blogspot.fr/p/download.html

Autorig, Interface and more : VIDEO

I recorded a video to talk about my autorig, the animation interface and other things I usually add to a character rig. The video is quite long (35 minutes) but I wanted to cover every features.

I recorded this video in french. If you don't speak french... well that's too bad, because first, you won't understand what I say, and second, you'll never know what anticonstitutionnellement means...

Now seriously, I will record a series of shorter videos in english, focused on stuff like the limbs rig, the facial rig, the interface, the tools, etc...so stay tuned ☺

GF autoRig - Explications détaillées [FRENCH] from Guillaume FERRACHAT on Vimeo.

SCRIPT : gf_vertexSnap

I just uploaded a first script on creativecrash. You can find it here.
It snaps a selected object to the center of a selection of components on a mesh. I use it to snap joints inside a model, but I'm sure you'll find a lot of other cool uses :)

More info : http://the-rigging-clown.blogspot.fr/p/download.html

Autorig

     As this is the very first post on this blog, I feel I should talk about my main tool as a character rigger.

     This is actually my second autorig. The first one (https://vimeo.com/33766447) was written in MEL, and was provided with an animation interface with tools and pickers. It worked fine but was limited to a very specific type of character : 2 arms, 2 legs, 1 toe, 5 fingers and a thumb.

     This new autorig is written in Python and presents much more options. Here is a video I made 2 months ago showing its features and how it works : https://vimeo.com/65519627 I did some improvement in the past 2 months but the most important things are in this video.

      There's one thing I kept in mind when building the animation interface : it HAS to fit each and every character; I must be able to add controllers (facial rig, antenna, tail, etc...) that the interface is able to recognize. In order to do that, each controller's message attribute is connected to a multi message attribute on a group, so the features like the Select All button simply checks that attribute to create a list of all the controllers.

    I'll write another post later to explain the details of how the interface works and how the pickers are generated dynamically.